The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana

"Michael Azerrad has always demonstrated a passionate feeling for the ideas, the ambitions, that drive the notable moments of recent musical history. But this annotated edition of his earlier book, which was already a very successful biography of a man and a band, breaks out even further into high art. He doubles back and doubles back on the doubling back, until what is the music here and what is the writing about the music become hard to tease apart. He's the perfect narrator, now, for a very important question, perhaps increasingly forgotten: why was punk important and how do we talk about it now? The urgencies of this question are everywhere in this urgent, uncertain, and deeply human work. Azzerad's inability to stop, his restless plunging onward, represent the further entanglement in some deep, fraught, endangered wisdom."--Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm and Hotels of North America

A downright revolutionary 30th-anniversary deluxe edition of the iconic bestselling biography of Nirvana, updated with exclusive new content exploring the personal and cultural forces that inspired the music, the author's friendship with Kurt Cobain and why multiple generations remain fascinated by the 1990s.

"Just tell the truth. That'll be better than anything else that's been written about me."--Kurt Cobain to author Michael Azerrad

It has been three decades since Nirvana upended the pop cultural landscape with Nevermind, the landmark album that became the soundtrack of Generation X, capturing its confusion, frustration, and passion. In 1993, Michael Azerrad published what stands as the definitive biography of this revolutionary band and its star-crossed frontman Kurt Cobain. Written with the band's complete cooperation--the only book to feature interviews with Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl--it became a massive bestseller, and in the words of Cobain, "the best rock book I've ever read."

Seven months after the book's original publication, Cobain was dead by suicide, making Come as You Are the only book-length record of the inner life and creative mind of one the most significant songwriters and musicians in rock history--a haunting and haunted artist whose influence continues powerfully to the present day.

Azerrad has revisited and reconsidered his original text. The result is this "amplified" version--a truly unique book within a book featuring extensive new essay-like annotations that deepen our understanding of this legendary band. Azerrad solves former mysteries, reinterprets the key players and the time, investigates depression and other psychic traumas, debunks myths and legends, and offers celebrations of that pivotal moment in the mid-1990s as he searches for the answer to the question: Why was this music so extraordinarily powerful?

Vivid, evocative, and thought-provoking, this gorgeous hardcover book--featuring 100 photos and ephemera--is an essential document not just for Nirvana fans but for anyone interested in the cultural legacy of the 1990s.